Picks and Pans Review: Taxi

Why is it that so many young male comic leads in movies are played as if they were missing major brain cells? Take Adam Sandler, at least in his early films, and now Fallon, who plays a New York City cop so dumb and hapless in this time-waster that the Big Apple's police force should sue him for libel.

The charmless Fallon, known to teen girls everywhere as "the cute guy" on TV's Saturday Night Live until this season, teams in Taxi with Latifah. She portrays a cabbie who dreams of being a NASCAR racecar driver. He hops into her cab after losing his own license due to his egregious driving. The duo spend the film getting themselves in and out of trouble as they pursue a gang of beautiful, scantily clad Brazilian bank robbers (led by model Bündchen). Ann-Margret turns up briefly, and pointlessly, as Fallon's soused mom. It's a measure of how crummy this comedy is that even the outtakes, which play alongside the closing credits, provide nary a titter.(PG-13)